1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a ceramic electronic component such as a multilayer ceramic capacitor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Ceramic electronic components such as multilayer ceramic capacitors have external electrodes to be electrically connected to a pad, etc., on a board using solder, etc. These external electrodes generally have a multi-layer structure where one base metal layer, at least one intermediate metal layer and one surface metal layer are provided in this order.
With the aforementioned ceramic electronic components, the components themselves, which are primarily constituted by ceramics, may crack when an internal force is applied as a result of temperature change at the time of connection or during use, or when an external force is applied at the time of connection or during use, and therefore attempts have been made to replace the intermediate metal layers of their external electrodes with intermediate conductive resin layers made of “synthetic resin containing conductive filler” so as to reduce the aforementioned internal force and external force by means of these intermediate conductive resin layers and thereby eliminate the possibility of cracking as mentioned above (refer to Patent Literature 1 below).
However, replacing the intermediate metal layers of the external electrodes with intermediate conductive resin layers made of “synthetic resin containing conductive filler” can possibly cause separation at the interface between such intermediate conductive resin layer and a metal layer (base metal layer, surface metal layer or another intermediate metal layer) due to the internal force or external force mentioned above.